Superfund Climate Resilience: Adaptive Capacity

Adaptive Capacity

Assuring the climate change adaptive capacity of a Superfund site involves:

• Implementing new or modified measures to increase resilience of the remedy or site infrastructure, as needed.
• Establishing plans for periodically reassessing remedy and site vulnerabilities, to determine if additional capacity is needed as cleanup progresses and climate conditions change.

Adaptive capacity is particularly important for remedies anticipated to operate for 30 years or longer. Information about how to maintain or build adaptive capacity is available in the resources below.

• ARC-X (EPA’s Climate Change Adaptation Resource Center): Online access to tools that help communities anticipate, plan for and adapt to the changing climate. 
• U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit: Federal interagency resource containing data, case studies and tools to help federal, regional, state, local, Tribal, private-sector and nonprofit organizations prepare for the effects of climate change. The listed Tools may be searched by topics such as ecosystems, functions such as identifying vulnerabilities, resilience steps such as understanding exposure, and distinct U.S. regions.

Information to help understand broader aspects of climate resilience planning is available through these online resources:

• FedCenter Climate Adaptation Program Area: Federal government resource that supports federal agency climate adaptation planning.
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate: Access to reports and activities concerning assessment of science related to climate change.
• GeoPlatform: Federal online resource providing access to extensive geospatial datasets that may be searched on topics such as biodiversity and ecosystems, land use and cover, and inland water.
• Climate Change: Resilience and Adaptation in New England (RAINE): An EPA database containing climate change vulnerability, resilience and adaptation reports, plans and webpages at the state, regional and community level.
• Water as a Climate Change Solution: EPA microsite linking to water sector tools and training, programs and initiatives, and climate adaptation practices implemented by state water agencies in Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington.
• Georgetown Climate Center, University of Washington Climate Impacts Group, and the Oregon State University PRISM Climate Group: Materials compiled by climate change research groups based at academic institutions.
• Tribal Climate Change Project: A collaborative project at the University of Oregon with support from the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative.